and yes, the gimp is a lot more complex than fotofinish, but that was kind of the point. if i remember right, fotofinish is for really simple things like getting out red-eye, cropping and other simple corrections. the gimp is much more powerful and thus has a higher learning curve. but it shldnt take you too long to get the hang of it. for all its power it's still got a fairly decent interface.

yes, i have the gimp. no, i dont use it any more and barely used it when i did. so, i wont really be the one to ask questions about it to. lkroll used to use it a lot and barbara says she uses it, so perhaps they can get you going.

make sure you also download the documentation. i checked the site and they've updated the docs fairly recently. so, that's good.

play around with it. study the docs and try everything. when you post questions make them as specific as you can and post images if you can. those always help. you're going to want to find the clone tool and test that out. that's the tool that got me interested in retouching. smudge, airbrush, paintbrushes and filters are going to be very useful in your pictures. you're probably also going to have to learn about layers, which is really nothing more than stacking images on top of each other...like layers on a cake.

you're going to be overwhelmed with all that's there at first. and you're likely to get a lot of information from here that's going to confuse you as well. try to pick one thing and learn it well then move on to the next thing and learn that. you're also going to hear a lot of terminology that may not be familiar. ask what it means or look in a good dictionary or look in the retouch glossary here. words can be real killers if you dont know them.

I had a go at this one too just for the challenge of it. I did the same as Gary and Butch and copied, flipped and rotated the left to fill in the missing part on the right. I used the smudge tool to get rid on the Jpeg artifacts by hand, rather than using any of the filters because that way I have more precise control. I zoom into about 300 or 400% and use a 10px brush set at an opacity of 10.
Sincerely Syd